Accordingly, Standard 601 states:
Standard 601. GENERAL PROVISIONS
(a) A law school shall maintain a law library that:
(1) provides support through expertise, resources, and services adequate to enable the law
school to carry out its program of legal education, accomplish its mission, and support
scholarship and research;
(2) develops and maintains a direct, informed, and responsive relationship with the faculty,
students, and administration of the law school;
(3) working with the dean and faculty, engages in a regular planning and assessment process, including written assessment of the effectiveness of the library in achieving its mission
and realizing its established goals; and
(4) remains informed on and implements, as appropriate, technological and other
developments affecting the library’s support for the law school’s program of legaleducation.

Question 16 dealing with student learning outcomes, particularly as the outcomes pertain to legal research proficiency.

Question 17 on preparing students, upon graduation, for admission to the bar and for effective, ethical, and responsible participation as members of the legal profession. After all associate, on average, spend 35% of their time doing legal research.

Question 20 discussing the first year writing experience because legal research is a part of legal writing.

Question 21 regarding the upper level writing requirement -- see legal research as a part of legal writing.

Questions 23 & 24 dealing with experiential learning and simulation courses. Law libraries have led the way with hands-on experience in the classroom.

Question 26 dealing with classroom instruction component of domestic field placements. Most of us provide legal research instruction here, too.

Question 29 dealing with "directed research" because many law librarians have individual research consultations with independent research study students or law review students.

Question 30 pertaining to distance education courses. Law libraries often teach online courses or support the course management system used by the school.

Question 37 dealing with formative and summative assessments. This is another area where law libraries have led the way in our for-credit courses.

When doing strategic planning for the law library, these matters should be addressed so that law library services and programming align directly with the law school's program of legal education.

For some, this may be an entirely new way of thinking about how the law library fits into the overall scheme. But it will allow for easier written assessment of the law library to articulate ongoing value to the law school.

The current version of Standard 601(3)(a) was developed during the Comprehensive Review as a method of involving a law library in the process of strategic planning required of a law school. It was envisioned that the planning and assessment taking place for a law school (under what was then Standard 203) would incorporate the work done by the library under this new Standard. To ensure that incorporation, it was decided that a written assessment should be completed by the library. However, when the requirement for strategic planning for a law school was removed during a later phase of the Comprehensive Review, no change was made to the new Standard 601. As a result, the library community has been left…

Law libraries are in the information business. To act as superior guides to this information, we must also be in the people business. We must be concerned with the people who seek our information. And we must be concerned with the people who guide those seekers to the information (i.e., our staff).

Contrary to popular belief, it's not easy to be a staff person in the rigid hierarchy of an academic law library. Particularly at a time when law libraries are facing increased budget pressures that require staff to do much more with much less. This is especially challenging with longtime staff who have seen their jobs change dramatically since they were hired. Many of these folks were not formally trained in librarianship, and they may be resistant to the flexibility needed in today's law library.

Given these challenges, how do we motivate our staff to be the very best guides to our information?

To that end, there was an enlightening program at the AALL Annual Conference in 2013 t…

As we further consider how to train future lawyers for the Algorithmic Society and develop the quality of thinking, listening, relating, collaborating, and learning that will define smartness in this new age, law schools must reach beyond their storied walls.

In law, we must got beyond talking about algorithmic implications to actually help shape algorithmic performance. We need lawyers and programmers to work together to create a sound "machine learning corpus." There's potential for an entirely new subfield to emerge if given the right support. With many law school attached to major research universities, it's a great place to start this cross-pollination and interdisciplinary work.

This type of interdisciplinary work would help to satisfy the career aspirations of advanced-degree seekers but also the wishes of many college presidents, deans, and faculty members who see an interdisciplinary professional education as a path to greater relevance, higher enrollments,…